


A heart

by StAnni



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Death, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 22:34:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17796005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: Let me be honest with you, this is not how I prefer it either.  I would have loved to be folded up in the facts that you have assembled around me in your mind.  I am, by no means, secure in the knowledge that apart from being a naked back, parted lips, a playful jab, a fistful of arguments, an ache of pleasure and of pain – that I am, in fact, a ghost to you.





	A heart

Mr Eames

You are right about many things, most thing probably. But you are wrong about one thing – you are wrong about me.

You grew up in a certain way because you are a certain way. The details of your history, you have never divulged and you keep these little weapons to yourself, only every now and then flicking a blade and catching skin. What you do not know about me is that when I was seventeen my aunt, Loria, whom I have told you about – sent me on a “self-discovery camp”. The camp, which was not a camp, was run by a man called Pastor Weston, and, let me teach you a trick right now – if you want to know whether a Pastor at a camp is in any real way affiliated with the divine – there is only one answer.  
At this camp, which was not a camp, emphasis was placed on the sins of those who came before us. We were, as infants covered in the blood of our mothers, the epic culmination of past sins.

I won’t tell you what happened at that camp, which was not a camp, because those details are not important right now – the important thing right now is that I understand how easy it is to assign blame and guilt and responsibility to the brittle branches that shift towards our fathers, the fathers of our fathers, and so forth. 

I only know two things about your youth and your family and it these are not facts that you ever told me, or even let slip. These are the only two things that I was able to source about your past through years of digging, spying, scraping. I know that at some point you lived in London and that your mother poisoned your abusive father. And from that I know that if you had gone to the camp, which was not a camp – you would have written the word “Murderer” on the wall above your bed.

I said that you are right about many things, most things – but not about me. I think that you know this, somewhere deep. I like to imagine that when you dream, and you dream again, and you dream all the way down – turtle upon turtle, that there is a door with my name scratched or scraped into the wood – and when you open this door, you stare at the blackest black – so black that only a fool would assume a wall or a floor – and you? You are no fool.

When we spoke before, I am not sure which day it was, whether we met at the café or whether you were lighting a cigarette next to me in bed – but when we spoke before, you said, frustrated or perhaps even upset “Darling, don’t test me. I know you better than you know yourself.”  
And the way that you said it, the flicker in your eyes, the way your mouth caught on the words for just an instant – that is how I know – I know that you know that you do not know me, at all.

Let me be honest with you, this is not how I prefer it either. I would have loved to be folded up in the facts that you have assembled around me in your mind. I am, by no means, secure in the knowledge that apart from being a naked back, parted lips, a playful jab, a fistful of arguments, an ache of pleasure and of pain – that I am, in fact, a ghost to you. I know that should you imagine the wall next to my bed at that camp that is not a camp, there are no words above my head.

I have learnt that the important thing to remember, not just right now, but at all times, is to remember. My aunt, Loria, kept boxes of photographs and old letters stuffed in books around her house. I would read these, when I stayed home, sick from school or simply bored – and the words, some from my dead-and-gone parents, some from my dead-and-gone grandparents would evoke images that I would keep as false memories of my own. These ideas made days bearable and camps, that were not camps, survivable. In the blackest black room inside the deepest dream in your mind, I like to imagine that there is a box – even if you can’t see it – and it is filled with the words that we have said to each other, even the words that were unkind, even the words that caused our cities to burn and crumble and from those words, should you ever find a light to the room, and find footing to the box, you would evoke me, even if it is through false memories.

You have asked me before, on many occasions, about the suits and the pocket squares – as if you really wanted to know – even when deliberately tearing off a button as you rip a shirt up over my chest, even when you, with a wry smile, reach for the pocket square to soak my come from between your legs. The answer to that is simple – I wear these suits, and these pocket squares, and the starched collars that you like to tear at so much simply because you like to take them off me. 

It's important for me to stop now, to tell you, or to remind you, or to warn you – however you may take it – that while memories are important, it is also important to feel the ground beneath your feet, to know where you are. So listen when I tell you – I am here, I am not there. Even if I am next to you, even when you slam your fist against the wall when you think that we are alone together, even when you shudder against me – spilling between our stomachs, even then – I am here, I am not there.

If you understand, and truly understand, I will not see you again. You know about many things, most things – and one of those things, I know, is that you know how to protect yourself. You have fortitude and if you knew me, which you don’t, you would know that, that is the characteristic I love most about you. Your mother poisoned your abusive father and your wall might say “Murderer” but it should say “Victor”.

The last thing that I can tell you, from this room within the lowest turtle, where there is no floor and no light, is that I know now that love is not what we thought it to be. You stood at a memorial for someone you know you never really knew, for someone you watched over your high walls – and your palms bled as you dug your nails through the skin. Next to you, Ariadne stood motionless and she turned to say something to you, but you already knew what she was going to say – because you are right about so many things, most things – and you turned away. Grief is deaf to warnings. 

What I know about love, now – is that it is all conjecture – a tangle of strings connecting promises and threats and lies and exclamations. When I was a child, my aunt, Loria, told me the story about the troll mirror – or was it your mother who told it you – I can’t be sure. Well, whomever the story belongs to – the mirror slips from the fingers of angels and shatter, and a billion million glittering slivers rain upon the hearts and eyes of men below – turning love from the ideal, the untouchable likeness that we struggle to see in each other, into the dangerous, hurtful and gloriously obliterated thing, that we recognise in the way that a glance turns, lips hesitate, a heart stops.


End file.
